Over the past few months, I have encountered multiple instances where someone would invite me to a Google Calendar, or send me a Google Doc file, ask that I fill in a restricted-access Google Form, or any other number of things that you can do with Google. And in every instance, those invites have been sent to my work email (a custom domain email for the Black Wolf Editorial domain). And in every instance, there has been some issue that all comes down to the lack of access to Google products.

Because Google has become mainstream and so embedded in our everyday lives, there is this assumption that every email address on the planet can access a Google product. But it's an assumption. And when you assume things, you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

In today's post, I want to deviate from talking about writing and editing specifically, and I want to highlight the issues associated with this Google assumption.

My email is NOT a Google email for a reason

I've had the Google connection issues with my email since the day I got it. And before you start to give unwanted advice about how I should contact technical support about getting access to Google, I should highlight that my email account was deliberately set up as NOT a Google email. It comes down to money and security.

The hidden costs of a custom domain Google email

If you have a custom domain (self-hosted or added onto a free website from the likes of WordPress.com), you can pay extra to get a custom domain email that just happens to be a Google email, with access to all the additional things that come with having a Google email (and some). At the time of writing this post, that cost was US$60 per year.

When I first went down the road of self-hosted packages, I was looking at the money I was spending and decided that I was being an idiot. I had fallen into one of the many hidden traps of building an online presence.

I had two domains (costing in the order of US$30 per year for the domain plus WhoIs privacy protection each) that were sitting on top of "free" websites from WordPress.com. I also had one email for Black Wolf that did fall into the category of being a Google email (US$60 per year).

I was paying US$120 per year for only one (1) email and two (2) so-called free websites that were insanely restrictive. I couldn't even put my sign-up forms on my sites, because those plugins for the free sites didn't exist back then.

But the self-hosting packages I was looking at were in the order of US$80 per year for one domain free for one year, an unlimited number of emails associated with that domain, no restrictions on what I can and can't do with my website, and unlimited bandwidth. I did have to add WhoIs privacy protection on top of that for in the order of US$14 per year. And to add a secondary domain to my hosting package, it was going to cost me in the order of US$30 per year (between the domain and the WhoIs privacy protection).

So… I was looking at roughly the same cost that I was paying for the restricted websites and only one email address as it was going to cost me for self-hosting... but if I went self-hosted, I would have full access to do whatever I wanted to do to my websites and have an unlimited number of emails associated with both domains.

Um… No-brainer. Make the move to self-hosted.

That move did come with a catch. When the license on the Google email came to an end, I would lose the Google email account and all the functionality that went with it. But I was okay with that.

During the one year that I had that Google custom domain email address, I never used any of the Google products logging in via that email. That email had one purpose and one purpose only: email communication.

The realities of using a communications email for logins

It's a matter of internet security. That Google email that I once had was a public-facing email address. It was plastered all across my website and my social media.

Why, oh why, would I ever take the risk of opening up my clients or my business to hackers by logging into systems used for business administration by using an email address that is publicly known?

I am just going to rub out the stress from my temples as I try to calm down before I get too worked up by the sheer idiocy of the idea.

Let's just say that I have a bad enough issue with dealing with scam artists who send me spam on a regular basis using my public-facing emails. I do not need to complicate the issue by paying extra money for features that I'm never going to use because of the security risks associated with them.

I use separate emails for logins

Don't get me wrong… I use Google products. But I have private Gmail accounts that I use to administer access to those products. They are secret squirrel email addresses. No one knows what they are, except me. Not even my family knows what they are. They all communicate with me via an email address that is NOT connected to anything else. Even my social media is connected to a separate secret squirrel email address that has the sole purpose of logging in to social media.

Every facet of my life has a separate email address attached to it, isolating certain aspects of my life from the components that are at the greatest risk of being hacked.

I have a general rule when it comes to deciding what emails will get used for what purpose: Emails for logins are chosen based on who will have access to the email information.

General communications is one email (it's actually a group of emails, with different emails used for clients and writing communities). My memberships tend to use the same emails for general communications, because those emails are publicly available through the profiles on the membership sites.

Login to my websites is a dedicated email for the purpose, and that email is different to the one that I use to login to my social media with. Logins to banking and taxes are a different email again. And login to my editing tools is yet another email.

I will gladly admit that it is an insane number of emails to monitor, and it might seem like overkill to some people, but guess what… I haven't been hacked either.

(I better quickly find some wood.)

Basically, the more publicly known and widespread an email address is, the greater the risk of hacking if you connect to systems using that email.

There is absolutely no way that I would ever use an email address that I give to strangers as the core login email address for anything that would put my systems or a client's copyright at risk.

Now to step off of my soapbox about why I don't have a custom domain Google email for a business email and get down to some of the other issues with using Google products that can be problematic for writers.

Google is NOT industry standard

Many writers will use Google Docs to write their drafts in. I get it. It's called flexibility. And when it comes to first drafts, you should feel comfortable to use whatever program you want to use.

I use Scrivener for my drafting. That too is NOT industry standard, but the way the program structures manuscripts works well for writing and editing—and it works for my brain. But the moment the manuscript is done, the moment I send a version of it out the door, I export that manuscript to an MS Word document, which IS industry standard.

In fact, ALL agents and publishers will expect you to submit materials in either MS Word or, on occasion, PDF. And ALL word-processing programs, including Google Docs, have the ability to export into MS Word or PDF files. So, regardless of the program that you use to draft your manuscript in, there is zero excuse to be sending anything other than DOCX or PDF formats.

Don't be lazy. Send your manuscript in whatever file format requested.

Now, I know that MS Word has its quirks and can be rather clunky with large documents—especially if those documents have a lot of images—but because it IS industry standard, editors also use MS Word.

Many editors use the track changes features in MS Word for the bulk of their editing. They also tend to use macros and add-in tools to help make their editing go faster. If you attempt to send an editor any other file format, they will likely ask you to resend the document in DOCX or they will download the document into MS Word format themselves, then use their additional tools available to them in MS Word, then upload the edited files back into whatever system they need to.

But the one file format that editors commonly steer clear of… Google Docs. (You don't want to know about the editing horror stories where editors have lost all their edits because of the collaboration features associated with Google Docs getting in the way.) There are some editors who work with Google Doc files, but they are rare.

And for anyone who tries to send me a Google Doc file… Look above… I can't access it using work systems. Send me a DOCX or PDF. (And those using Pages... Dudes, that's a MAC-only file format. I use Windows.)

The invites to calendars or other Google features

Google products are great for collaborations.

For those writers who want to bounce ideas around with a group of writers, Google Docs is perfect for you. You can give the feedback in real time, speeding up the collaborative process.

You can share a Google Calendar with your writing groups or friends, and they can instantly see when events are coming up. Any changes to those events, and they see those changes too. And you can integrate Google Calendar into so many collaboration and scheduling tools, including social media. I have my mentoring session scheduling tool connected to my Google Calendar; the system looks at my available slots to determine which slots to offer to clients, and when a client selects one, the system automatically adds the appointment to my calendar (which I look at every day). And I have a special Google Calendar that has been integrated into the events calendar for one of my Discord groups; change the events on Google, and Discord sees those changes, too.

I have found the Google Forms (incorporated with Google Sheets) is so much more flexible in creating surveys, giving me the ability to add as many questions as I want, using checkboxes, radio buttons, and sliders (some features that you need to pay for through the likes of SurveyMonkey). Export the results from Google Sheets to an Excel file, and I can do some amazing analysis. (And my inner-scientist loves creating those graphs.)

Google was smart in the way that they created their products, because they work well for quickly sharing data between collaborators. BUT those products are only accessible to those with Google accounts.

And as I've hinted at already, not everyone is using a Google email.

Don't assume. ASK!

If you are going to use Google products for anything that you send to others, ask before you hit that send button. The recipient will know if they will have issues with using that Google product, and they will likely have a solution for you.

As for me…

Well… I will likely continue to encounter those who keep insisting on sending me links and invites for various Google-related products. And I will likely continue to get frustrated and need to rub the stress away from my temples, as I go on another rant about the assumption that people make about Google emails.